Archive for the ‘International Oppression’ Category

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) – The sound of the vuvuzela could be lost from South African soccer grounds – although not because of the droning wall of noise that made it so unpopular with global audiences during the 2010 World Cup.

Premier Soccer League (PSL) officials say that although they are not yet pursuing a ban, it has become a topic of conversation after a rise in incidents where the vuvuzela was used to cause harm.

“Our rules ban all dangerous weapons from matches,” PSL general manager Derek Blanckensee told Reuters. “If the vuvuzela is to become a dangerous weapon then we will look into this.”

Vuvuzelas were among a number of objects thrown at Orlando Pirates coach Roger de Sa after his side were held to a draw by AmaZulu at the Moses Mabhida Stadium earlier this month.

One week later a supporter, angry at a red-card decision against his team, charged on the pitch and attempted to strike the referee with the plastic instrument during a league match between Lamontville Golden Arrows and Kaizer Chiefs in Durban.

A second fan of the Chiefs, the country’s most popular club who are seeking a first league title in eight years, was stopped after he too went on the pitch. Both were arrested and released on R500 (US$55) bail earlier this week.

The incidents have not only called into question security at PSL games but also the future of the vuvuzela which remains popular with most local fans.

PSL officials are wary of a backlash should they decide the instrument may no longer be taken to games.

Some other countries have already banned the vuvuzela after fans attempted to bring it into stadiums.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria’s government and rebels accused each other of launching a deadly chemical attack near the northern city of Aleppo on Tuesday in what would, if confirmed, be the first use of such weapons in the two-year-old conflict.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who has resisted overt military intervention in Syria, has warned Assad in the past that any use ofchemical weapons would be a “red line”. There has however been no suggestion of rebels possessing such arms.

Syria’s information minister said rebels had fired a rocket carrying chemical agents that killed 16 people and wounded 86. State television said later the death toll had risen to 25.

The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict using a network of contacts in Syria, put the number of dead at 26, including 16 soldiers.

The reported death toll is far below the mass slaughter inflicted on the Iraqi Kurdish city of Halabja where an estimated 5,000 people died in a chemical attack ordered by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein 25 years ago.

There was no immediate confirmation from Western governments or international organizations of a chemical attack, but Russia, an ally of Damascus, accused rebels of carrying out such a strike.

“We are very seriously concerned by the fact that weapons of mass destruction are falling into the hands of the rebels, which further worsens the situation in Syria and elevates the confrontation in the country to a new level,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Britain said its calculations would change if a chemical attack had taken place. “The UK is clear that the use or proliferation of chemical weapons would demand a serious response from the international community and force us to revisit our approach so far,” a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

A Reuters photographer said victims he had visited in Aleppo hospitals were suffering breathing problems and that people had said they could smell chlorine after the attack.

“I saw mostly women and children,” said the photographer, who cannot be named for his own safety. He quoted victims at the University of Aleppo hospital and the al-Rajaa hospital as saying people were dying in the streets and in their houses.

President Bashar al-Assad, battling an uprising against his rule, is widely believed to have a chemical arsenal.

Syrian officials have neither confirmed nor denied this, but have said that if it existed it would be used to defend against foreign aggression, not against Syrians. There have been no previous reports of chemical weapons in the hands of insurgents.

“CONVULSIONS, THEN DEATH”

Information Minister Omran al-Zoabi said rebels fired “a rocket containing poison gases” at the town of Khan al-Assal, southwest of Aleppo, from the city’s southeastern district of Nairab, part of which is rebel-held.

“The substance in the rocket causes unconsciousness, then convulsions, then death,” the minister said.

But a senior rebel commander, Qassim Saadeddine, who is also a spokesman for the Higher Military Council in Aleppo, denied this, blaming Assad’s forces for the alleged chemical strike.

“We were hearing reports from early this morning about a regime attack on Khan al-Assal, and we believe they fired a Scud with chemical agents,” he told Reuters by telephone from Aleppo.

Washington has expressed concern about chemical weapons falling into the hands of militant groups – either hardline Islamist rebels fighting to topple Assad or his regional allies.

Israel has threatened military action if such arms were sent to the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group.

Zoabi said Turkey and Qatar, which have supported rebels, bore “legal, moral and political responsibility” for the strike – a charge dismissed by a Turkish official as baseless.

In a televised news conference, Zoabi said Syria’s military would never use internationally banned weapons.

“Syria’s army leadership has stressed this before and we say it again, if we had chemical weapons we would never use them due to moral, humanitarian and political reasons,” he said.

Syrian state TV aired footage of what it said were casualties of the attack arriving at one hospital in Aleppo.

Men, women and children were rushed inside on stretchers as doctors inserted medical drips into their arms and oxygen tubes into their mouths. None had visible wounds to their bodies, but some interviewed said they had trouble breathing.

An unidentified doctor interviewed on the channel said the attack was either “phosphorus or poison” but did not elaborate.

“The Free Syrian Army hit us with a rocket, we smelled something and then everyone got dizzy and fell down. People were falling to the ground, ” said a sobbing woman in a flowered veil, lying on a stretcher with a drip in her arm.

A young girl on a stretcher wept as she said: “My chest closed up. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t breathe … We saw people falling dead to the floor. My father fell, he fell and now we don’t know where he is. God curse them, I hope they die.”

A man in a green surgical mask, who said he had been helping to evacuate the casualties, said: “It was like a powder, and anyone who breathed it in fell to the ground.”

“PINK SMOKE”

Two weeks ago rebel fighters seized a police academy in Khan al-Assal, about eight km (five miles) southwest of Aleppo, which was being used as an artillery base by Assad’s troops.

But the Syrian Observatory said Assad’s forces had since retaken at least part of the town.

A rebel fighter in Khan al-Assal said he had seen pink smoke rising after a powerful blast shook the area.

Ahmed al-Ahmed, from the Ansar brigade in a rebel-controlled military base near Khan al-Assal, told Reuters that a missile had hit the town at around 8 a.m. (02.00 a.m. EDT).

“We were about two kilometers from the blast. It was incredibly loud and so powerful that everything in the room started falling over. When I finally got up to look at the explosion, I saw smoke with a pinkish-purple color rising up.

“I didn’t smell anything, but I did not leave the building I was in,” said Ahmed, speaking via Skype.

“The missile, maybe a Scud, hit a regime area, praise God, and I’m sure that it was an accident. My brigade certainly does not have that (chemical) capability and we’ve been talking to many units in the area, they all deny it.”

Ahmed said the explosion was quickly followed by an air strike. A fighter jet circled a police school held by the rebels on the outskirts of Khan al-Assal and bombed the area, he said.

His account could not be independently verified.

Ahmet Uzumcu, head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said in Vienna he had no independent information about any use of such arms in Syria.

The World Health Organization, a U.N. agency, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, also said they had not been able to confirm the reports.

Ha’aretz has revived the mystery surrounding the inability to find weapons of mass destruction stockpiles in Iraq, the most commonly cited justification for Operation Iraqi Freedom and one of the most embarrassing episodes for the United States. Satellite photos of a suspicious site in Syria are providing new support for the reporting of a Syrian journalist who briefly rocked the world with his reporting that Iraq’s WMD had been sent to three sites in Syria just before the invasion commenced.

The newspaper reveals that a 200 square-kilometer area in northwestern Syria has been photographed by satellites at the request of a Western intelligence agency at least 16 times, the most recent being taken in January. The site is near Masyaf, and it has at least five installations and hidden paths leading underneath the mountains. This supports the reporting of Nizar Nayouf, an award-winning Syrian journalist who said in 2004 that his sources confirmed that Saddam Hussein’s WMDs were in Syria.

One of the three specific sites he mentioned was an underground base underneath Al-Baida, which is one kilometer south of Masyaf. This is a perfect match. The suspicious features in the photos and the fact that a Western intelligence agency is so interested in the site support Nayouf’s reporting, showing that his sources in Syria did indeed have access to specific information about secret activity that is likely WMD-related. Richard Radcliffe, one of my co-writers atWorldThreats.com, noticed that Masyaf is located on a road that goes from Hamah, where there is an airfield sufficient to handle relatively large aircraft, into Lebanon and the western side of the Bekaa Valley, another location said to house Iraqi weapons.

It seems to be commonly accepted that Iraq did not have WMDs at all. The intelligence was obviously flawed, but the book has not been closed on what actually happened. The media blasted the headline that Charles Duelfer, the head of the Iraq Survey Group tasked with finding out if Saddam had WMDs, concluded that a transfer did not occur. In reality, his report said they were “unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war” due to the poor security situation.

Although no conclusion was made, Duelfer has since said that he is “convinced” that no WMD went to Syria. He is a competent and credible individual, but there is evidence that key information on this possibility was not received by the Iraq Survey Group, which had many of its own problems.

On February 24, 2009, I went to see a talk Duelfer gave at the Free Library of Philadelphia to promote his book. He admitted there were some “loose ends” regarding the possibility that Iraqi WMD went to Syria, but dismissed them. Among these “loose ends,” Duelfer said, was the inability to track down the Iraqis who worked for a company connected to Uday Hussein that sources said had driven “sensitive” material into Syria. A Pentagon document revealsthat an Iraqi dissident reported that 50 trucks crossed the border on March 10, 2003, and that his sources in Syria confirmed they carried WMD. These trucks have been talked about frequently and remain a mystery.

During the question-and-answer period and during a follow-up interview, Duelfer made several interesting statements to me that reinforced my confidence that such a transfer occurred, although we can not be sure of the extent of it.

General Georges Sada, the former second-in-command of the Iraqi Air Force, claimed in his 2006 book that he knew two Iraqi pilots that flew WMD into Syria over the summer of 2002, which came before a later shipment on the ground. I asked Duelfer if Nizar Nayouf or the two Iraqi pilots were spoken with.

“I did not interview the pilots nor did I speak with the Syrian journalist you mentioned,” he said. “We were inundated with WMD reports and could not investigate them all. … To narrow the problem, we investigated those people and places we knew would have either been involved or aware of regime WMD activities.”

He then told me that the lack of testimony about such dealings is what convinced him that “a lot of material went to Syria, but no WMD.” He cited the testimony of Naji Sabri, the former Iraqi foreign minister, in particular.

“I knew him very well, and I had been authorized to make his life a lot better, or a lot worse,” he told me.

President Barack Obama has ordered the Justice Department to show lawmakers its classified legal justification for drone strikes against U.S. citizens abroad who are found to be terrorists.

Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees will be given access to the documents from the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, White House press secretary Jay Carney said. The move was made days after a Justice Department outline of circumstances in which American citizens could be targeted became public.

Justice to Share Classified Drone Rationale With Lawmakers

The Obama administration’s policy on strikes by unmanned aircraft, pursued with little oversight by Congress or the judiciary, has angered lawmakers who have pressed for its legal justification. Questions about the policy have emerged as a potential obstacle to Senate confirmation of John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser and an architect of the drone policy, as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Carney said today that there has been “heightened interest” in the admnistration’s rationale and that Obama “wants Congress to be part of our efforts to build a durable, legal framework for our counterterrorism efforts.”

During a hearing today on his nomination before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the 57-year-old Brennan will confront questions on the use of the remotely piloted planes.

Justice Document

Lawmakers and human-rights lawyers say the outline, a 16- page unclassified Justice Department white paper obtained by NBC News, doesn’t provide the transparency Obama promised when he pledged in May 2009 that whenever his administration couldn’t release information for national-security reasons, he would “insist that there is oversight of my actions — by Congress or by the courts.”

Members of the intelligence panels will be granted access to guidance from the Office of Legal Counsel as it related to the Justice Department white paper.

California Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairman of the intelligence committee, said the panel would receive the classified documents today.

“I am pleased that the president has agreed to provide the Intelligence Committee with access to the OLC opinion regarding the use of lethal force in counterterrorism operations,” Feinstein said in a statement. “It is critical for the committee’s oversight function to fully understand the legal basis for all intelligence and counterterrorism operations.”

‘Defined Circumstances’

The document obtained by NBC News detailed circumstances under which the U.S. is said to be justified in ordering the killing of an American citizen in al-Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist group. The white paper was prepared for members of Congress, Carney said.

“In defined circumstances, a targeted killing of a U.S. citizen who has joined al-Qaeda or its associated forces would be lawful under U.S. and international law,” the memo says. Those circumstances include killing a U.S. citizen who is also an al-Qaeda leader actively engaged in “planning operations to kill Americans.”

Such killings are legal, the document said, if an “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government” determines the citizen poses an imminent threat of violent attack, if capture is “infeasible,” and if the operation can be carried out “in a manner consistent with applicable law-of- war principles.”

In 2011, a drone strike in Yemen killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American who was a leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

More Strikes

During the past four years, the Obama administration conducted six times as many drone strikes in Pakistan, the country where the CIA has done most of its targeted killings, as President George W. Bush’s administration did in the previous four years, according to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The nonprofit organization tracks drone strikes and civilian casualties.

Senators led by Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, have pressed the administration to explain its basis for using lethal force against Americans abroad and renewed their request in a letter on Feb. 4. The senators implied that foot-dragging might hurt Brennan’s confirmation.

“The executive branch’s cooperation on this matter will help avoid an unnecessary confrontation that could affect the Senate’s consideration of nominees for national security positions,” they wrote.

Policy ‘Wise’

Carney has defended the policy on targeted killings abroad, including of Americans, as “legal,” “ethical” and “wise.” He said the counterterrorism efforts are designed to limit civilian casualties.

Amnesty International, the human-rights advocacy organization, said that releasing additional information to members of Congress doesn’t do enough to answer questions about the drone program’s legality and called on lawmakers to hold hearings with independent specialists who can review the administration’s rationale.

“Transparency is not the end goal,” Zeke Johnson, director of the organization’s security with human rights campaign, said in a statement. “Ending killing lists is. The president must ensure that the government’s use of lethal force fully complies with international law.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States reversed policy on Wednesday and said it would back launching talks on a treaty to regulate arms sales as long as the talks operated by consensus, a stance critics said gave every nation a veto.

The decision, announced in a statement released by the U.S. State Department, overturns the position of former President George W. Bush’s administration, which had opposed such a treaty on the grounds that national controls were better.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States would support the talks as long as the negotiating forum, the so-called Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty, “operates under the rules of consensus decision-making.”

“Consensus is needed to ensure the widest possible support for the Treaty and to avoid loopholes in the Treaty that can be exploited by those wishing to export arms irresponsibly,” Clinton said in a written statement.

While praising the Obama administration’s decision to overturn the Bush-era policy and to proceed with negotiations to regulate conventional arms sales, some groups criticized the U.S. insistence that decisions on the treaty be unanimous.

“The shift in position by the world’s biggest arms exporter is a major breakthrough in launching formal negotiations at the United Nations in order to prevent irresponsible arms transfers,” Amnesty International and Oxfam International said in a joint statement.

However, they said insisting that decisions on the treaty be made by consensus “could fatally weaken a final deal.”

“Governments must resist US demands to give any single state the power to veto the treaty as this could hold the process hostage during the course of negotiations. We call on all governments to reject such a veto clause,” said Oxfam International’s policy adviser Debbie Hillier.

The proposed legally binding treaty would tighten regulation of, and set international standards for, the import, export and transfer of conventional weapons.

Supporters say it would give worldwide coverage to close gaps in existing regional and national arms export control systems that allow weapons to pass onto the illicit market.

Nations would remain in charge of their arms export control arrangements but would be legally obliged to assess each export against criteria agreed under the treaty. Governments would have to authorize transfers in writing and in advance.

The main opponent of the treaty in the past was the U.S. Bush administration, which said national controls were better. Last year, the United States accounted for more than two-thirds of some $55.2 billion in global arms transfer deals.

Arms exporters China, Russia and Israel abstained last year in a U.N. vote on the issue.

The proposed treaty is opposed by conservative U.S. think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, which said last month that it would not restrict the access of “dictators and terrorists” to arms but would be used to reduce the ability of democracies such as Israel to defend their people.

The U.S. lobbying group the National Rifle Association has also opposed the treaty.

A resolution before the U.N. General Assembly is sponsored by seven nations including major arms exporter Britain. It calls for preparatory meetings in 2010 and 2011 for a conference to negotiate a treaty in 2012.

The treaty, which passed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before an attempt to ratify it through a voice vote fell flat in August, had a broad base of support, with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) standing next to each other Monday to implore senators to join their cause.

Former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), backed by his wife, fellow former Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), attended Tuesday’s vote to urge the treaty’s ratification. The former Senate majority leader looked on from his wheelchair as senators voted from their desks instead of approaching the room’s podium.

But many Republicans, who accounted for the 38 opposing votes, have been vocal in their opposition to the treaty, which they say infringes on U.S. sovereignty.

“I do not support the cumbersome regulations and potentially overzealous international organizations with anti-American biases that infringe upon American society,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said on the Senate floor.

“I and many of my constituents who home-school or send their children to religious schools have justifiable doubt that a foreign body based in Geneva, Switzerland, should be deciding what is best for a child at home in Utah,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said, also speaking from the floor.

And former presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, has taken up opposition to the treaty as a new post-election cause, calling it an “egregious move to deny parents of children with disabilities the right to do what they think is in their child’s best interest.”

Kerry, who has been vocal in his support of the treaty, responded to Lee’s charge that, if ratifying the treaty does “nothing” and is non-binding, why bother voting for it?

“I said it does not change U.S. law; that is different from saying it doesn’t do anything. If it didn’t do anything I wouldn’t be here, nor would President Bush have signed it,” he said, contending that the U.N. measure would benefit Americans living and traveling abroad.

“This is one of the saddest days I’ve seen in almost 28 years in the Senate,” Kerry said in a statement following the vote. “It needs to be a wakeup call about a broken institution that’s letting down the American people. We need to fix this place.”

McCain has previously stressed the importance of the treaty to disabled veterans abroad. “We need to step up and do the right thing for Bob Dole and the rest of our U.S. veterans,” McCain said Monday.

Putin in 2009 outlined his strategy for economic success. Alas, poor Obama did the opposite but nevertheless was re-elected. Bye, bye Miss American Pie. The Communists have won in America with Obama but failed miserably in Russia with Zyuganov who only received 17% of the vote. Vladimir Putin was re-elected as President keeping the NWO order out of Russia while America continues to repeat the Soviet mistake.

After Obama was elected in his first term as president the then Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin gave a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January of 2009. Ignored by the West as usual, Putin gave insightful and helpful advice to help the world economy and saying the world should avoid the Soviet mistake.

Recently, Obama has been re-elected for a 2nd term by an illiterate society and he is ready to continue his lies of less taxes while he raises them. He gives speeches of peace and love in the world while he promotes wars as he did in Egypt, Libya and Syria. He plans his next war is with Iran as he fires or demotes his generals who get in the way.

Putin said regarding the military,

“…instead of solving the problem, militarization pushes it to a deeper level. It draws away from the economy immense financial and material resources, which could have been used much more efficiently elsewhere.”

Well, any normal individual understands that as true but liberalism is a psychosis . O’bomber even keeps the war going along the Mexican border with projects like “fast and furious” and there is still no sign of ending it. He is a Communist without question promoting the Communist Manifesto without calling it so. How shrewd he is in America. His cult of personality mesmerizes those who cannot go beyond their ignorance. They will continue to follow him like those fools who still praise Lenin and Stalin in Russia. Obama’s fools and Stalin’s fools share the same drink of illusion.

Reading Putin’s speech without knowing the author, one would think it was written by Reagan or another conservative in America. The speech promotes smaller government and less taxes. It comes as no surprise to those who know Putin as a conservative. Vladimir Putin went on to say:

“…we are reducing taxes on production, investing money in the economy. We are optimizing state expenses.

The second possible mistake would be excessive interference into the economic life of the country and the absolute faith into the all-mightiness of the state.

There are no grounds to suggest that by putting the responsibility over to the state, one can achieve better results.

Unreasonable expansion of the budget deficit, accumulation of the national debt – are as destructive as an adventurous stock market game.

During the time of the Soviet Union the role of the state in economy was made absolute, which eventually lead to the total non-competitiveness of the economy. That lesson cost us very dearly. I am sure no one would want history to repeat itself.”

President Vladimir Putin could never have imagined anyone so ignorant or so willing to destroy their people like Obama much less seeing millions vote for someone like Obama. They read history in America don’t they? Alas, the schools in the U.S. were conquered by the Communists long ago and history was revised thus paving the way for their Communist presidents. Obama has bailed out those businesses that voted for him and increased the debt to over 16 trillion with an ever increasing unemployment rate especially among blacks and other minorities. All the while promoting his agenda.

“We must seek support in the moral values that have ensured the progress of our civilization. Honesty and hard work, responsibility and faith in our strength are bound to bring us success.”- Vladimir Putin

The red, white and blue still flies happily but only in Russia. Russia still has St George defeating the Dragon with the symbol of the cross on its’ flag. The ACLU and other atheist groups in America would never allow the US flag with such religious symbols. Lawsuits a plenty against religious freedom and expression in the land of the free. Christianity in the U.S. is under attack as it was during the early period of the Soviet Union when religious symbols were against the law.

Let’s give American voters the benefit of the doubt and say it was all voter fraud and not ignorance or stupidity in electing a man who does not even know what to do and refuses help from Russia when there was an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead we’ll say it’s true that the Communists usage of electronic voting was just a plan to manipulate the vote. Soros and his ownership of the company that counts the US votes in Spain helped put their puppet in power in the White House. According to the Huffington Post, residents in all 50 states have filed petitions to secede from the Unites States. We’ll say that these Americans are hostages to the Communists in power. How long will their government reign tyranny upon them?

Russia lost its’ civil war with the Reds and millions suffered torture and death for almost 75 years under the tyranny of the United Soviet Socialist Republic. Russians survived with a new and stronger faith in God and ever growing Christian Church. The question is how long will the once “Land of the Free” remain the United Socialist States of America? Their suffering has only begun. Bye bye Miss American Pie! You know the song you hippies. Sing it! Don’t you remember? The 1971 hit song by American song writer Don McLean:

“And, as I watched him on the stage my hands were clenched in fists of rage.

No angel born in Hell could break that Satan’s spell

And, as the flames climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial rite, I saw…

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel said on Sunday it was withholding this month’s transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority, after the United Nations’ de facto recognition of a Palestinian state.

Under interim peace deals, which Israel says the Palestinians violated by unilaterally seeking an upgrade of their status at the United Nations, it collects about $100 million a month in duties on behalf of the authority.

But, Israeli officials said, the authority owes about $200 million to the Israel Electric Corporation, and that money will now be deducted from the tax transfers.

The cash-strapped authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the occupied West Bank, largely depends on the tax money to pay civil servants’ salaries. Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Palestinian official, said Israel was guilty of “piracy and theft” by refusing to hand over the funds.

Israel has previously frozen payments to the body during times of heightened security and diplomatic tensions, provoking strong international criticism, such as when the U.N. cultural body UNESCO granted the Palestinians full membership a year ago.

“I do not intend this month to transfer the funds to the Palestinians. In the coming period I intend to use the money to deduct debts the Palestinian Authority owes to the Israel Electric Corporation and other bodies,” Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Israel Radio.

The U.N. victory for the Palestinians was a diplomatic setback for the United States and Israel, which were joined by only a handful of countries in voting against upgrading the Palestinians’ observer status at the U.N. to “non-member state”, like the Vatican, from “entity”.

Hours after the U.N. vote, Israel said it was authorizing 3,000 new settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and expediting planning work for thousands more dwellings in a geographically sensitive area close to Jerusalem, which critics said would kill off Palestinian hopes of a viable state.

The United States said the expansion plan, which also drew strong European criticism, was counterproductive to the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks frozen since 2010.